War Is A Crime .org - Israelhttp://warisacrime.org/taxonomy/term/114/0
enSkipping The Speech for All the Wrong Reasonshttp://warisacrime.org/content/skipping-speech-all-wrong-reasons
<p>Don't get me wrong, I'm glad to hear that Congress members will <a href="http://skipthespeech.org">skip Netanyahu's speech</a> no matter what reason they offer. Here are some of them:</p>
<p><strong>It's too close to Netanyahu's election. </strong>(That doesn't persuade me. If we had fair, open, publicly funded, un-gerrymandered, verifiably counted elections, then "politics" wouldn't be a dirty word and we would want politicians to show themselves doing things to try to please us before, during, and after elections. I want them acting that way now, even with our broken system. I don't want the U.S. interfering in Israeli elections, but allowing a speech is hardly the same as backing coups in Ukraine and Venezuela or giving Israel billions of dollars worth of weapons every year.)</p>
<p><strong>The Speaker didn't ask the President.</strong> (This is likely the big reason that Democrats are promising to skip the speech. I'm actually amazed more of them haven't made that promise. Netanyahu seemed to me to miss the extent to which the United States has become a term-limited monarchy. Congress typically wants to pass the buck on wars to the President. The President typically controls one of the two parties quite tightly. But do I actually care that Congress didn't consult the President? Hell no! Imagine if, during the run-up to the 2003 attack on Iraq, Congress had offered a joint-session microphone to El Baradei or Sarkozy or Putin or, indeed, Hussein to denounce all the bogus claims about WMDs in Iraq? Would you have been outraged by the impoliteness toward President Bush or delighted that a million people might not get killed for no damn reason?)</p>
<p>These kinds of reasons do have a practical weakness: they lead to calls for postponing the speech, rather than canceling it. Some other reasons have more serious flaws.</p>
<p><strong>The speech damages bipartisan U.S. support for Israel. </strong>(Really? A slim minority of the President's party skips the speech for a laundry list of lame excuses and suddenly the United States is going to stop providing all the free weapons and vetoing every attempt at legal accountability for the crimes of the Israeli government? And that would be a <em>bad</em> thing if it actually happened?)</p>
<p><strong>The speech hurts the critical effort of negotiations to keep Iran from getting a nuclear weapon. </strong>(This is the worst of the bad reasons. It pushes the false idea that Iran is trying to build a nuclear weapon and threatening to use it. It plays right into Netanyahu's fantasies of poor helpless nuclear Israel the victim of Iranian aggression. In reality, Iran has not attacked another nation in modern history. If only Israel or the United States could say as much!)</p>
<p>As I said, I'm glad anyone's <a href="http://skipthespeech.org">skipping the speech</a> for any reason. But I find it deeply disturbing that an enormously important and deeply moral reason to skip the speech is obvious and known to every member of Congress, and while most are acting against it, those acting in accordance with it refuse to articulate it. The reason is this: Netanyahu is coming to spread war propaganda. He told Congress lies about Iraq in 2002 and pushed for a U.S. war. He has been lying, according to leaks this week of his own spies' information and according to the understanding of the U.S. "intelligence" services, about Iran. It is illegal to spread war propaganda under the International Convention on Civil and Political Rights, to which Israel is a party. Congress is struggling to keep up with the wars President Obama is continuing, launching, and risking. Here's one war Obama seems not to want, and Congress is bringing in a foreign leader with a record of war lies to give them their marching orders. Meanwhile, an agency of that same foreign government, AIPAC, is holding its big lobby meeting in Washington.</p>
<p>Now, it is true that nuclear energy facilities create dangerous targets. Those drones flying around French nuclear plants scare the hell out of me. And it is true that nuclear energy places its possessor a short step away from nuclear weaponry. Which is why the U.S. should stop spreading nuclear energy to countries that have no need of it, and why the U.S. should never have given nuclear bomb plans to Iran or sentenced Jeffrey Sterling to prison for allegedly revealing that act. But you can't accomplish good by using horrific mass murder to avoid horrific mass murder -- and that's what Israeli-U.S. aggression toward Iran means. Stirring up a new cold war with Russia in Syria and Ukraine is dangerous enough without throwing Iran into the mix. But even a war that confined itself to Iran would be horrifying.</p>
<p>Imagine if we had one Congress member who would say, "I'm skipping the speech because I'm opposed to killing Iranians." I know we have lots of constituents who like to think that their progressive Congress member secretly thinks that. But I'll believe it when I hear it said.</p>
<p></p><p><a href="http://warisacrime.org/content/skipping-speech-all-wrong-reasons" target="_blank">read more</a></p>http://warisacrime.org/content/skipping-speech-all-wrong-reasons#commentsCongressIranIsraelFri, 27 Feb 2015 15:29:03 +0000davidswanson69285 at http://warisacrime.orgSouth African Civil Rights Leader Calls Israeli Apartheid of Palestinians Much More Violent than South African Government Treatment of Blackshttp://warisacrime.org/content/south-african-civil-rights-leader-calls-israeli-apartheid-palestinians-much-more-violent-sou
<p>By Ann Wright<br /><br />Reverend Dr. Allan Boesak, a South African civil rights leader who worked with Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Nelson Mandela to end apartheid and promote reconciliation in South Africa, calls the Israeli treatment of Palestinians “much more violent than the South African government treatment of blacks.”<br /><br />In a discussion at the Harris Methodist Church on January 11, 2015 with social justice leaders in the Honolulu, Hawaii community, Dr. Boesak said that&nbsp; black South Africans faced violence from the apartheid white government and that he went to funerals each week of those killed in the struggle, but never on the scale that the Palestinians face from the Israeli government.&nbsp; The South African government killing of blacks was small compared to numbers of Palestinians the Israeli government has killed.<br /><br />405 black South Africans were killed by the South African government from 1960-1994 in eight major incidents.&nbsp; The largest number of blacks killed in specific incidents were 176 in Soweto in 1976 and 69 in Sharpeville in 1960.<br /><br />In contrast, from 2000-2014, the Israeli government killed 9126 Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank. In Gaza alone, 1400 Palestinians were killed in 22 days in 2008-2009, 160 killed in 5 days in 2012 and 2200 killed in 50 days in 2014. 1,195 Israelis were killed from 2000 through 2014.&nbsp;&nbsp; http://www.ifamericansknew.org/stat/deaths.html<br /><br />In the face of overwhelming violence, Dr. Boesak commented that it is human nature that a violence response by some is inevitable, but that it is incredible that the response of the majority of Palestinians is non-violent.<br /><br />In 1983, Boesak launched the United Democratic Front (UDF), a movement of over 700 civic, student, worker, and religious organizations that became the first non-racial movement and the main force behind the anti-apartheid activities in the South Africa during the decisive decade of the 1980s. Together with Archbishop Tutu, Dr. Frank Chikane, and Dr. Beyers Naude, he campaigned internationally for sanctions against the South African apartheid regime and in the final campaign for financial sanctions during 1988-89.<br />&nbsp;<br />In the 1990s Dr. Boesak joined the unbanned African National Congress, served on its first team to the Convention for Democratic South Africa (CODESA) negotiations preparing for the first free elections in South Africa, and was elected its first leader in the Western Cape. After the 1994 elections, he became the first Minister of Economic Affairs in the Western Cape and later in 1994 was appointed South African Ambassador to the UN in Geneva.<br /><br />Dr. Boesak currently is the Desmond Tutu Chair of Peace, Global Justice, and Reconciliation Studies at Christian Theological Seminary and Butler University, both located in Indianapolis, Indiana.<br /><br />On other aspects of the apartheid struggle, Dr. Boesak said that in South Africa the government did not create whites only roads, did not erect huge walls to keep blacks physically in specific areas and did not allow and protect whites to take lands from blacks and settle on those lands.<br /><br />According to Boesak, international solidarity through boycott of South African goods and divestment from South African companies kept the anti-apartheid movement energized.&nbsp; Knowing that organizations around the world were forcing universities to divest from South African investments and that millions of people were boycotting South African products gave them hope during the difficult struggle.&nbsp; He said that the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement against Israeli apartheid is small compared to the level reached in the 1980s against South African apartheid and encouraged organizations to take up boycott and divestment stances, such as the Presbyterian Church in the United States did in 2014 by divesting from Israeli companies.<br /><br />In a 2011 interview, Boesak said that he strongly supports economic sanctions on the state of Israel. He said, “Pressure, pressure, pressure from every side and in as many ways as possible: trade sanctions, economic sanctions, financial sanctions, banking sanctions, sports sanctions, cultural sanctions; I'm talking from our own experience. In the beginning we had very broad sanctions and only late in the 1980s did we learn to have targeted sanctions. So you must look to see where the Israelis are most vulnerable; where is the strongest link to the outside community? And you must have strong international solidarity; that's the only way it will work. You have to remember that for years and years and years when we built up the sanctions campaign it was not with governments in the West. They came on board very, very late.”<br /><br />Boesak added, “It was the Indian government and in Europe just Sweden and Denmark to begin with and that was it. Later on, by 1985-86, we could get American support. We never could get Margaret Thatcher on board, never Britain, never Germany, but in Germany the people who made a difference were the women who started boycotting South African goods in their supermarkets. That's how we built it up. Never despise the day of small beginnings. It was down to civil society. But civil society in the international community could only build up because there was such a strong voice from within and that is now the responsibility of the Palestinians, to keep up that voice and to be as strong and as clear as they possibly can. Think up the arguments, think through the logic of it all but don't forget the passion because this is for your country.”<br /><br />Boesak called the U.S. government protection of the Israeli government’s actions the single most important reason why apartheid Israel exists.&nbsp; Without the support of the U.S. government in United Nations votes and in provision of military equipment to use on Palestinians, Boesak said the Israeli government would not be able to act with impunity.</p>
<p><a href="http://warisacrime.org/content/south-african-civil-rights-leader-calls-israeli-apartheid-palestinians-much-more-violent-sou" target="_blank">read more</a></p>http://warisacrime.org/content/south-african-civil-rights-leader-calls-israeli-apartheid-palestinians-much-more-violent-sou#commentsIsraelPalestineTue, 13 Jan 2015 17:04:31 +0000davidswanson69135 at http://warisacrime.orgNew TCBH! poem by Gary Lindorff: 'Grinding my Ax'http://warisacrime.org/content/new-tcbh-poem-gary-lindorff-grinding-my-ax
<p><strong>By Gary Lindorff</strong></p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;"><span><font face="times new roman, serif" size="4">My ax is grinding<br />All by itself!<br />I can hear it giving itself to the grinding wheel<br />Every day when I wake up,<br />Most nights when I go to bed.<br />&nbsp;<br />I am just grinding it.<br />&nbsp;<br />What would I use it for?<br />To cut down my enemies to size?<br />To swing against the foundations of the NSA?<br />To destroy the diabolical machinery<br />That is excavating the tarsands in Alberta?<br />To obliterate all the missiles and missile silos...</font></span></p>
<p style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;"><font face="times new roman, serif" size="4"><br /></font></p>
<p><a href="http://warisacrime.org/content/new-tcbh-poem-gary-lindorff-grinding-my-ax" target="_blank">read more</a></p>http://warisacrime.org/content/new-tcbh-poem-gary-lindorff-grinding-my-ax#commentsAbolitionCasualtiesCivil Rights / LibertiesCongressCorporatism and FascismEnvironmentGeneral DiscussionHuman RightsIsraelMilitary Industrial ComplexObama AdministrationPoetryWed, 31 Dec 2014 17:29:06 +0000dlindorff69091 at http://warisacrime.orgNo More Khirbet Khizehshttp://warisacrime.org/content/no-more-khirbet-khizehs
<p><img alt="" src="http://warisacrime.org/sites/afterdowningstreet.org/files/screen568x568.jpeg" style="width: 320px; height: 568px; float: right; border-width: 2px; border-style: solid; margin: 10px;" /></p>
<blockquote><p>"Fields that would never be harvested, plantations that would never be irrigated, paths that would become desolate. A sense of destruction and worthlessness. An image of thistles and brambles everywhere, a desolate tawniness, a braying wilderness. And already from those fields accusing eyes peered out at you, that silent accusatory look as of a reproachful animal, staring and following you so there was no refuge." -- Yizhar Smilansky, <em>Khirbet Khizeh</em></p>
</blockquote>
<p>On the day in 2014 that I read the new English translation of <em>Khirbet Khizeh,</em> Tom Engelhardt published a blog post rewriting recent news articles on the U.S. Senate's torture report as a 2019 Senate report on drone murders. The 2019 "news" media in Tom's believable account is shocked -- shocked, I tell you -- by the rampant murder discovered to have been committed using missiles from drones of all things.</p>
<p>The point is that most of what's been discussed as news from the recent torture report, and certainly all of the fundamental moral points -- has been known -- or, more accurately, <em>knowable</em> for years. For the past several years, the U.S. establishment has been repeatedly "banning" torture. It has also been repeatedly discovering the same evidence of torture, over and over again. Leading torturers have gone on television to swear they'd do it all again, while radical activist groups have demanded "investigations."</p>
<p>The point is that at some point "truth and reconciliation" is lies and reconciliation -- the lies of pretending that the truth needed to be unearthed, that it was hidden for a time, that the crimes weren't committed in the broad daylight of television spotlights on a sweaty old man assuring us he was about to start working on the dark side.</p>
<p>Illustrated at right, from the iNakba app, are villages that were destroyed in 1948 to create Israel. Generations of Israelis have grown up not knowing, not wanting to know, pretending not to know, and knowing without confronting the Catastrophe. Israelis are discovering what happened, unburying the hidden truth, filming aging participants' distorted confessions, and hunting out the outlines of disappeared villages on GoogleEarth.</p>
<p>But what if the truth was always marching naked down the street with trumpets sounding?</p>
<p>In May 1949, Yizhar Smilansky published <em>Khirbet Khizeh, </em>a fictional account of the destruction of a fictional village much like many real ones. Smilansky knew or hoped that he was ahead of his time, so much so that he began the tale by framing it as a recollection from the distant future. The narrator, like the reader, was known by the author to be unable to see for years to come.</p>
<p>What would keep the book alive until that distant day?</p>
<p>Poetry.</p>
<p>It's not a Senate report. <em>Khirbet Khizeh</em> is a work of masterful insight and storytelling that grips you and compels you to enter the experience of its narrator and his companions, as they do what the author had done, as they imitate Nazis before all the ashes had fallen from the skies above the ovens in Europe.</p>
<p>This book was planted and grew. It's been taught in Israeli schools. It was a movie on Israeli television in 1978. And now, with a sense that perhaps sleepy eyes are stretching open at long last, the book has had itself translated into the language of the imperial homeland, English.</p>
<p>But how could poetry keep heresy alive?</p>
<p>Several ways, I think. Absolute failure to pay attention, for one. Think about how literature is taught in many U.S. schools, for example. The ability of people to hear the poetry without the meaning, for another. Think about people singing John Lennon's <em>Imagine </em>without having the slightest idea they've just proposed to abolish religions, nations, and private property, or how people throw around the phrase "peace on earth" in December. Perverse but predictable and perhaps predicted misinterpretation, for another. Think about how viewers of the propaganda film <em>Zero Dark Thirty</em> read accounts of torture, for example -- as a dirty job that needed doing for a greater cause.</p>
<p>It's a strain, to me at least, to read <em>Khirbet Khizeh</em> as a celebration of genocide or mass-eviction. And the book not only suffered but also benefitted from being ahead of its time. It pre-existed the mythologies and rhetorical defenses that grew up around the Catastrophe in the decades that followed. When the narrator makes a slight resistance to what he is engaged in, no reader can find anything but humanitarian motivation in his resistance. The idea that this soldier, questioning his fellow soldiers, is engaged in anti-Semitism would literally make no sense. He's revolted by the cruelty, no more no less -- cruelty that every adult and child <em>has to have always known</em> was part of any mass settlement of ancient lands in 1948.</p>
<p>When I was a child, in elementary school, I wrote a story about an eviction of a family from its house, complete with plenty of tear-jerking details. As a good American I wrote about British redcoats evicting patriotic U.S. revolutionaries. My teacher suggested to me that I had a talent for writing. But that wasn't writing. Had I written of the Native Americans, the Hawaiians, the Filipinos, the Vietnamese, of Diego Garcia or Vieques or the Marshall Islands or Thule or Okinawa or any of the many places about which silence was expected, that <em>might</em> have been writing.</p>
<p>Let us wish no more Khirbet Khizehs on the people of Palestine and many more <em>Khirbet Khizeh</em>s on the world.</p>
<p></p><p><a href="http://warisacrime.org/content/no-more-khirbet-khizehs" target="_blank">read more</a></p>http://warisacrime.org/content/no-more-khirbet-khizehs#commentsHistoryIsraelPalestineThu, 18 Dec 2014 20:11:06 +0000davidswanson69064 at http://warisacrime.orgBlack, White, Racism and ‘Law Enforcement’http://warisacrime.org/content/black-white-racism-and-%E2%80%98law-enforcement%E2%80%99
<p></p><P>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; The murder of black men by white police officers is nothing new in the United States. The fact that the media is taking notice is what is newsworthy. Despite Civil Rights laws enacted decades ago, racism is deeply embedded in the fabric of U.S. society.</p><br />
<P>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; The recent cases of Eric Gardner in New York and Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, &nbsp;victims of horrendous cruelty and murder, only received coverage due to the outrage their deaths, and the almost immediate impunity their killers received, caused across the nation. But is white police brutality against&nbsp;blacks&nbsp;something new? Anecdotal evidence presented here indicates that that is hardly the case.</p>
<p><a href="http://warisacrime.org/content/black-white-racism-and-%E2%80%98law-enforcement%E2%80%99" target="_blank">read more</a></p>http://warisacrime.org/content/black-white-racism-and-%E2%80%98law-enforcement%E2%80%99#commentsCivil Rights / LibertiesHuman RightsIsraelPalestineTue, 09 Dec 2014 18:19:44 +0000Robert Fantina69018 at http://warisacrime.orgTalk Nation Radio: Lia Tarachansky on How Israel Was Really Created in 1948http://warisacrime.org/content/talk-nation-radio-lia-tarachansky-how-israel-was-really-created-1948
<p><iframe scrolling="no" src="https://w.soundcloud.com/player/?url=https%3A//api.soundcloud.com/tracks/180727173&amp;color=ff5500&amp;auto_play=false&amp;hide_related=false&amp;show_comments=true&amp;show_user=true&amp;show_reposts=false" frameborder="no" height="166" width="100%"></iframe></p>
<p><img src="http://www.davidswanson.org/sites/davidswanson.org/files/tarachansky.jpg" hspace="10" align="right" vspace="10" width="167" /><a href="https://soundcloud.com/davidcnswanson/talk-nation-radio-lia-tarachansky-on-how-israel-was-really-created-in-1948">https://soundcloud.com/davidcnswanson/talk-nation-radio-lia-tarachansky-on-how-israel-was-really-created-in-1948</a></p>
<p>Lia Tarachansky discusses her new film <em>On the Side of the Road</em> which looks at the creation of Israel and the erasure of what was there before. Learn more at: <a href="http://naretivproductions.com" target="_blank">http://naretivproductions.com</a></p>
<p>Total run time: 29:00</p>
<p>Host: David Swanson.<br />Producer: David Swanson.<br />Music by Duke Ellington.</p>
<p>Download from <a href="https://archive.org/details/talknationradio_20141210" target="_blank">Archive</a> or&nbsp;<a href="http://davidswanson.org/sites/davidswanson.org/files/talknationradio/talknationradio_20141210.mp3">LetsTryDemocracy</a>.</p>
<p>Pacifica stations can also download from <a href="http://audioport.org/index.php?op=program-info&amp;program_id=77658&amp;nav=&amp;" target="_blank">AudioPort</a>.</p>
<p>Syndicated by Pacifica Network.</p>
<p><strong><em>Please encourage your local radio stations to carry this program every week!</em></strong></p>
<p><strong><em>Please embed the SoundCloud audio on your own website!</em></strong></p>
<p><strong>Past Talk Nation Radio shows are all available free and complete at<br /><a _cke_saved_href="http://davidswanson.org/talknationradio" href="http://TalkNationRadio.org">http://TalkNationRadio.org</a></strong></p>
<p><strong>and at<br /><a href="https://soundcloud.com/davidcnswanson/tracks">https://soundcloud.com/davidcnswanson/tracks</a></strong></p>
<p><a href="http://warisacrime.org/content/talk-nation-radio-lia-tarachansky-how-israel-was-really-created-1948" target="_blank">read more</a></p>http://warisacrime.org/content/talk-nation-radio-lia-tarachansky-how-israel-was-really-created-1948#commentsIsraelPalestineTalk Nation RadioTue, 09 Dec 2014 17:33:33 +0000davidswanson69017 at http://warisacrime.org The Day Israel Attacked Americahttp://warisacrime.org/content/day-israel-attacked-america
<p><iframe width="420" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/c5mu79ygShs?rel=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe></p>
http://warisacrime.org/content/day-israel-attacked-america#commentsHistoryIsraelSun, 07 Dec 2014 03:38:39 +0000davidswanson69006 at http://warisacrime.orgIsrael's Secrethttp://warisacrime.org/content/israels-secret
<p>Here in Virginia, U.S.A., I'm aware that the native people were murdered, driven out, and moved westward. But my personal connection to that crime is weak, and frankly I'm too busy trying to rein in my government's current abuses to focus on the distant past. Pocahontas is a cartoon, the Redskins a football team, and remaining Native Americans almost invisible. Protests of the European occupation of Virginia are virtually unheard of.</p>
<p>But what if it had just happened a moment ago, historically speaking? What if my parents had been children or teenagers? What if my grandparents and their generation had conceived and executed the genocide? What if a large population of survivors and refugees were still here and just outside? What if they were protesting, nonviolently and violently -- including with suicide bombings and homemade rockets launched out of West Virginia? What if they marked the Fourth of July as the Great Catastrophe and made it a day of mourning? What if they were organizing nations and institutions all over the world to boycott, divest, and sanction the United States and seek its prosecution in court? What if, before being driven out, the Native Americans had built hundreds of towns with buildings of masonry, hard to make simply disappear?</p>
<p>In that case, it would be more difficult for those unwilling to face the injustice not to notice. We would have to notice, but tell ourselves something comforting, if we refused to deal with the truth. The lies we tell ourselves would need to be much stronger than they are. A rich mythology would be necessary. Everyone would have to be taught from childhood onward that the native people didn't exist, left voluntarily, attempted vicious crimes justifying their punishment, <em>and</em> were not really people at all but irrational killers still trying to kill us for no reason. I'm aware that some of those excuses conflict with others, but propaganda generally works better with multiple claims, even when they can't all be true at the same time. Our government might even have to make questioning the official story of the creation of the United States an act of treason.</p>
<p>Israel <em>is</em> that imagined United States, just formed in our grandparents' day, two-thirds of the people driven out or killed, one-third remaining but treated as sub-human. Israel is that place that must tell forceful lies to erase a past that is never really past. Kids grow up in Israel not knowing. We in the United States, whose government gives Israel billions of dollars worth of free weapons every year with which to continue the killing (weapons with names like Apache and Black Hawk), grow up not knowing. We all look at the "peace process," this endless charade of decades, and deem it inscrutable, because we've been educated to be incapable of knowing what the Palestinians want even as they shout it and sing it and chant it: they want to return to their homes.</p>
<p>But the people who did the deed are, in many cases, still alive. Men and women who, in 1948, massacred and evicted Palestinians from their villages can be put on camera recounting what they did. Photographs of what was done and accounts of what life was like before the Nakba (the Catastrophe) exist in great volume. Towns that were taken over still stand. Families know that they live in stolen houses. Palestinians still have keys to those houses. Villages that were destroyed still remain visible in outline on Google Earth, the trees still standing, the stones of demolished houses still nearby.</p>
<p>Lia Tarachansky is an Israeli-Canadian journalist who covers Israel and Palestine for the Real News Network. She was born in Kiev, Ukraine, the Soviet Union. When she was a child, her family moved to a settlement in the West Bank, part of the ongoing continuation of the process begun in 1948. She had a good childhood with a real sense of community in that "settlement," or what we would call a housing subdivision built on native farm land in violation of a treaty made with savages. She grew up not knowing. People pretended nothing had been there before. Then she found out. Then she made a movie to tell the world.</p>
<p>The film is called <em><a href="http://www.naretivproductions.com">On the Side of the Road</a> </em>and it tells the story of the founding of Israel in 1948 through the memories of those who killed and expelled the people of Palestine, through the memories of survivors, and through the perspectives of those who have grown up since. 1948 was a 1984 year, a year of doublespeak. Israel was created in blood. Two-thirds of the people of that land were made refugees. Most of them and their descendants are refugees still. Those who remained in Israel were made second-class citizens and forbidden to mourn the dead. But the crime is referred to as liberation and independence. Israel celebrates its Independence Day while Palestinians mourn the Nakba.</p>
<p>The film takes us to the sites of vanished villages destroyed in 1948 and in 1967. In some cases, villages have been replaced with woods and made into national parks. The imagery is suggestive of what the earth might do if humanity departed. But this is the work of part of humanity attempting to erase another human group. If you put up a sign commemorating the village, the government removes it quickly.</p>
<p>The film shows us those who participated in the Nakba. They recall shooting the people they called Arabs and whom they'd been told were primitive and worthless, but who they knew had a modern literate society with some 20 newspapers in Jaffa, with feminist groups, with everything then thought of as modern. "Go to Gaza!" they told the people whose homes and land they were stealing and destroying. One man recalling what he did begins with an attitude almost bordering on the carefree heartlessness one sees in former killers in the Indonesian film <em>The Act of Killing</em>, but eventually he's explaining that what he's done has been eating away at him for decades.</p>
<p>In <em><a href="http://www.naretivproductions.com">On the Side of the Road</a> </em>we meet a young Palestinian man from a permanent refugee camp who calls a place his home although he's never been there, and who says that his children and grandchildren will do likewise. We see him obtain a 12-hour pass to visit the place his grandparents lived. He spends half the 12 hours getting through check points. The place he visits is a National Park. He sits and talks about what he wants. He wants nothing related to revenge. He wants no harm done to Jews. He wants no people evicted from anywhere. He says that, according to his grandparents, Jews and Muslims lived together amicably before 1948. That, he says, is what he wants -- that and to return home.</p>
<p>Israelis concerned by their nation's open secret take some inspiration in the film from an art project in Berlin. There people posted signs with images on one side and words on the other. For example: a cat on one side, and this on the other: "Jews are no longer allowed to own pets." So, in Israel, they made signs of a similar nature. For example: a man with a key on one side, and on the other, <em>in German</em>: "It is forbidden to mourn on the Day of Independence." The signs are greeted by vandalism and angry, racist threats. The police accuse those who posted the signs of "disturbing law and order," and forbid them in the future.</p>
<p>At Tel Aviv University we see students, Palestinian and Jewish, hold an event to read out the names of villages that were destroyed. Nationalists waving flags come to try to shout them down. These properly educated Israelis describe cities as having been "liberated." They advocate expelling all Arabs. A member of the Israeli parliament tells the camera that Arabs want to exterminate Jews and rape their daughters, that the Arabs threaten a "holocaust."</p>
<p>The filmmaker asks an angry Israeli woman, "If you were an Arab, would you celebrate the state of Israel?" She refuses to allow the possibility of seeing things from someone else's point of view to enter her head. She replies, "I'm not an Arab, thank God!"</p>
<p>A Palestinian challenges a nationalist very politely and civilly, asking him to explain his views, and he swiftly walks away. I was reminded of a talk I gave last month at a university in New York at which I criticized the Israeli government, and a professor angrily walked out -- a professor who'd been eager to debate other topics on which we disagreed.</p>
<p>A woman who participated in the Nakba says in the film, in an effort to excuse her past actions, "We didn't know it was a society." She clearly believes that killing and evicting people who seem "modern" or "civilized" is unacceptable. Then she goes on to explain that pre-1948 Palestine was just what she says mustn't be destroyed. "But you lived here," says the filmmaker. "How could you not know?" The woman replies simply, "We knew. We knew."</p>
<p>A man who took part in killing Palestinians in 1948 excuses himself as having been only 19. And "there will always be new 19-year-olds," he says. Of course there are also 50-year-olds who will follow evil orders. Happily, there are also 19-year-olds who will not.</p>
<p>Catch a screening of <em>On the Side of the Road: </em></p>
<p>Dec 3, 2014 <a href="https://nyusjp.wordpress.com/">NYU, NY</a><br />Dec 4, 2014 <a href="https://www.facebook.com/events/624266461015010/">Philadelphia, PA</a><br />Dec 5, 2014 <a href="https://www.facebook.com/events/1464158300527027/1464189103857280/?notif_t=like">Baltimore, MD</a><br />Dec 7, 2014 <a href="https://redemmas.org/2640?month=12&amp;year=2014">Baltimore, MD</a><br />Dec 9, 2014 <a href="http://www.nyumburu.umd.edu/">Washington DC </a><br />Dec 10, 2014 <a href="http://www.thejerusalemfund.org/ht/d/EventDetails/i/48767">Washington DC</a><br />Dec 10, 2014 <a href="https://www.facebook.com/AmericanSJP">American University </a><br />Dec 13, 2014 <a href="http://www.ecacollective.org/index.html">Washington DC</a><br />Dec 15, 2014 <a href="http://www.busboysandpoets.com/events/2014/12/15">Washington DC</a></p>
<p></p><p><a href="http://warisacrime.org/content/israels-secret" target="_blank">read more</a></p>http://warisacrime.org/content/israels-secret#commentsIsraelPalestineWed, 03 Dec 2014 15:35:15 +0000davidswanson68990 at http://warisacrime.orgIsrael News - Nov 21, 2014http://warisacrime.org/content/israel-news-nov-21-2014
<p class="p1">&nbsp;</p>
<p class="p2"><span style="font-size:18px;"><strong><span class="s2"><a href="http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=741499">Hamas calls for 'day of rage' in the West Bank on Friday - Maan News Agency</a></span></strong></span></p>
<p class="p1"><span style="font-size:18px;"><strong><br /></strong></span></p>
<p class="p2"><span style="font-size:18px;"><strong><span class="s2"><a href="http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4593804,00.html">Violence in East Jerusalem; 'Intifada starts today,' Palestinian kids say - Ynetnews</a></span></strong></span></p>
<p class="p1"><span style="font-size:18px;"><strong><br /></strong></span></p>
<p class="p2"><span style="font-size:18px;"><strong><span class="s2"><a href="http://www.worldtribune.com/2014/11/19/hamas-said-activating-jerusalem-cells-israel-rocked-synagogue-massacre/">Hamas said activating Jerusalem cells as Israel rocked by synagogue massacre - World Tribune</a></span></strong></span></p>
<p class="p1"><span style="font-size:18px;"><strong><br /></strong></span></p>
<p class="p2"><span style="font-size:18px;"><strong><span class="s2"><a href="http://www.memri.org/report/en/0/0/0/0/0/0/8249.htm">Hamas Praises Recent Terror Attacks In Israel, Calls Launch Of New Intifada, Threatens: 'The Palestinian Volcano Will Erupt’ - memri.org</a></span></strong></span></p>
<p class="p1"><span style="font-size:18px;"><strong><br /></strong></span></p>
<p class="p2"><span style="font-size:18px;"><strong><span class="s2"><a href="http://www.jpost.com/Arab-Israeli-Conflict/Police-on-heightened-alert-as-Hamas-calls-for-day-of-rage-382430">Police on heightened alert as Hamas calls for ‘day of rage’ - jpost.com</a></span></strong></span></p>
<p class="p1"><span style="font-size:18px;"><strong><br /></strong></span></p>
<p class="p2"><span style="font-size:18px;"><strong><span class="s2"><a href="http://www.timesofisrael.com/police-bolster-efforts-to-secure-capital-in-wake-of-attack/">Police set up checkpoints at East Jerusalem neighborhoods - The Times of Israel</a></span></strong></span></p>
<p class="p1"><span style="font-size:18px;"><strong><br /></strong></span></p>
<p class="p2"><span style="font-size:18px;"><strong><span class="s2"><a href="http://www.timesofisrael.com/police-bust-massive-shipment-of-firecrackers-knives-bound-for-jerusalem/">Police bust massive shipment of firecrackers, knives and swords bound for capital - The Times of Israel</a></span></strong></span></p>
<p class="p1"><span style="font-size:18px;"><strong><br /></strong></span></p>
<p class="p2"><span class="s2"><a href="http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4594176,00.html">Hamas resumes trials of homemade rockets, IDF says - Ynetnews</a></span></p>
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<p class="p2"><span class="s2"><a href="http://www.jpost.com/Arab-Israeli-Conflict/Hamas-affiliated-social-media-abuzz-with-cartoons-glorifying-Jerusalem-terror-attack-382152">Hamas affiliated social media abuzz with cartoons glorifying Jerusalem terror attack (CARTOONS) - jpost.com</a></span></p>
<p class="p1">&nbsp;</p>
<p class="p2"><span class="s2"><a href="http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=c74_1416468559">VIDEO: Palestinians in the Middle-East celebrate the synagogue massacre -&nbsp;LiveLeak.com</a></span></p>
<p class="p1">&nbsp;</p>
<p class="p2"><span class="s2"><a href="http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=606_1416424483">VIDEO: Palestinians brandish AXES to celebrate synagogue attack -&nbsp;LiveLeak.com</a></span></p>
<p class="p1">&nbsp;</p>
<p class="p2"><span class="s2"><a href="http://www.jpost.com/Middle-East/Hamass-new-hit-song-in-Hebrew-Zionist-you-are-about-to-be-killed-by-a-car-382233">VIDEO: Hamas’s new hit song in Hebrew: 'Zionist, you are about to be killed by a car’ - jpost.com</a></span></p>
<p class="p1">&nbsp;</p>
<p class="p2"><span class="s2"><a href="http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=382_1416415794">VIDEO: Attempted hit and run in Israel -&nbsp;LiveLeak.com</a></span></p>
<p class="p1">&nbsp;</p>
<p class="p2"><span class="s2"><a href="http://www.timesofisrael.com/west-bank-hit-and-run-driver-admits-to-carrying-out-planned-attack/">Hamas member admits to running over soldiers in Nov. 5 attack - The Times of Israel</a></span></p>
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<p class="p2"><span class="s2"><a href="http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4594476,00.html">Hamas planned to assassinate FM Lieberman - Ynetnews</a></span></p>
<p class="p1">&nbsp;</p>
<p class="p2"><span class="s2"><a href="http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=741272">The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine on Thursday officially mourned two of its members who were killed after carrying out the attack on an Israeli synagogue - Maan News Agency</a></span></p>
<p class="p1">&nbsp;</p>
<p class="p2"><span class="s2"><a href="http://pflp.ps/english/2014/11/18/occupation-is-responsible-for-escalation-in-jerusalem/">PFLP statement on the Synagogue attack in Jerusalem - Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine</a></span></p>
<p class="p1">&nbsp;</p>
<p class="p2"><span class="s2"><a href="http://www.thetower.org/1269-contradictory-messages-from-pa-in-response-to-synagogue-massacre/">Contradictory messages from PA in response to Synagogue massacre, While Abbas condemned the attack one of his senior advisors and the official Facebook page of Fatah praised it - The Tower</a></span></p>
<p class="p1">&nbsp;</p>
<p class="p2"><span class="s2"><a href="http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4593516,00.html">Israel spy chief says Abbas is not inciting to terror, while Netanyahu points accusing finger at Palestinian president - Ynetnews</a></span></p>
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<p class="p2"><span class="s2"><a href="http://www.yourmiddleeast.com/news/abbas-powerless-to-stop-palestinian-violence-experts-say_28073">Abbas powerless to stop Palestinian violence, experts say - AFP</a></span></p>
<p class="p1">&nbsp;</p>
<p class="p2"><span style="font-size:18px;"><strong><span class="s2">-------------------------------------------------------</span></strong></span></p>
<p class="p2"><span style="font-size:18px;"><strong><span class="s2"><a href="http://www.timesofisrael.com/terrorists-home-destroyed-marking-return-to-controversial-policy/">Terrorist's home destroyed by Israel, marking return to controversial policy - The Times of Israel</a></span></strong></span></p>
<p class="p1"><span style="font-size:18px;"><strong><br /></strong></span></p>
<p class="p2"><span style="font-size:18px;"><strong><span class="s2"><a href="http://english.pnn.ps/index.php/human-rights/8610-order-to-demolish-homes-of-palestinians-who-perpetrated-attacks-unlawful-and-immoral">Palestinians: Order to demolish homes of Palestinians who perpetrated attacks unlawful and immoral - pnn.ps</a></span></strong></span></p>
<p class="p1"><span style="font-size:18px;"><strong><br /></strong></span></p>
<p class="p2"><span style="font-size:18px;"><strong><span class="s2"><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8qah6nfF0sY">VIDEO: Israel forces demolish a Palestinian home of an Hamas member in wake of attack on synagogue - AP</a></span></strong></span></p>
<p class="p1"><span style="font-size:18px;"><strong><br /></strong></span></p>
<p class="p2"><span style="font-size:18px;"><strong><span class="s2"><a href="http://www.thejewishweek.com/news/israel-news/committee-approves-78-apartments-eastern-jerusalem">Committee Approves 78 Apartments In Eastern Jerusalem - The Jewish Week</a></span></strong></span></p>
<p class="p1"><span style="font-size:18px;"><strong><br /></strong></span></p>
<p class="p2"><span style="font-size:18px;"><strong><span class="s2"><a href="http://www.timesofisrael.com/us-consistently-opposed-to-israeli-construction-activity-in-e-jerusalem/">US slams Israeli construction in E. Jerusalem, renewed home demolitions - The Times of Israel</a></span></strong></span></p>
<p class="p1"><span style="font-size:18px;"><strong><br /></strong></span></p>
<p class="p2"><span class="s2"><a href="http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/.premium-1.627642">Five major EU states to Israel: Demolishing terrorists' homes will escalate tensions - Haaretz</a></span></p>
<p class="p1">&nbsp;</p>
<p class="p2"><span class="s2"><a href="http://rt.com/news/207115-idf-protect-settlers-attacking-palestinians/">Israeli soldiers protect settlers attacking Palestinian villagers (VIDEO) - RT News</a></span></p>
<p class="p1">&nbsp;</p>
<p class="p2"><span class="s2"><a href="http://english.al-akhbar.com/content/backed-armed-forces-israeli-settlers-attack-west-bank-school">Israeli settlers stab a Palestinian in Jerusalem, attack school in West Bank - Al Akhbar English</a></span></p>
<p class="p1">&nbsp;</p>
<p class="p2"><span class="s2"><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4B8SO51C3CM">VIDEO: Palestinians attend funeral ceremony for hanged bus driver - YouTube</a></span></p>
<p class="p1">&nbsp;</p>
<p class="p2"><span class="s2"><a href="http://www.i24news.tv/en/news/israel/diplomacy-defense/51502-141119-did-a-palestinian-pathologist-recant-his-findings-in-the-death-of-jerusalem-bus-driver">Did Palestinian pathologist recant findings in death of Jerusalem bus driver? Israel urges Palestinian Authority to admit that death was suicide, pathologist appears to cast doubt&nbsp;- i24news</a></span></p>
<p class="p1">&nbsp;</p>
<p class="p2"><span class="s2"><a href="http://www.foxnews.com/world/2014/11/19/egypt-takes-aim-at-hamas-terror-tunnels/">Egypt takes aim at Hamas' terror tunnels, closes the key Rafah crossing into Gaza and announces that it would establish a 500-meter buffer zone - Fox News</a></span></p>
<p class="p1">&nbsp;</p>
<p class="p2"><span class="s2"><a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/11/20/us-mideast-palestinians-egypt-idUSKCN0J415J20141120">Closing of Egypt's Rafah crossing leaves thousands of Gazans stranded - Reuters</a></span></p>
<p class="p1">&nbsp;</p>
<p class="p2"><span class="s1">To contact Bartolo email peaceloversingle[at]yahoo[dot]com (replacing [at] with @, [dot] with .)</span></p>
<p></p><p><a href="http://warisacrime.org/content/israel-news-nov-21-2014" target="_blank">read more</a></p>http://warisacrime.org/content/israel-news-nov-21-2014#commentsIsraelFri, 21 Nov 2014 02:18:15 +0000bartolo68946 at http://warisacrime.orgIsraeli Chooses "Honorable Life" Over Joining Militaryhttp://warisacrime.org/content/israeli-chooses-honorable-life-over-joining-military
<p>Danielle Yaor is 19, Israeli, and refusing to take part in the Israeli military. She is one of 150 who have committed themselves, thus far, to <a href="https://www.facebook.com/refusingIDF">this position</a>:</p>
<blockquote><p><em><a href="http://www.worldbeyondwar.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/danielle.jpg"><img alt="danielle" class="alignleft size-full wp-image-2695" src="http://www.worldbeyondwar.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/danielle.jpg" style="margin: 10px; width: 264px; height: 414px; float: left;" /></a>We, citizens of the state of Israel, are designated for army service. We appeal to the readers of this letter to set aside what has always been taken for granted and to reconsider the implications of military service.</em></p>
<p><em>We, the undersigned, intend to refuse to serve in the army and the main reason for this refusal is our opposition to the military occupation of Palestinian territories. Palestinians in the occupied territories live under Israeli rule though they did not choose to do so, and have no legal recourse to influence this regime or its decision-making processes. This is neither egalitarian nor just. In these territories, human rights are violated, and acts defined under international law as war-crimes are perpetuated on a daily basis. These include assassinations (extrajudicial killings), the construction of settlements on occupied lands, administrative detentions, torture, collective punishment and the unequal allocation of resources such as electricity and water. Any form of military service reinforces this status quo, and, therefore, in accordance with our conscience, we cannot take part in a system that perpetrates the above-mentioned acts.</em></p>
<p><em>The problem with the army does not begin or end with the damage it inflicts on Palestinian society. It infiltrates everyday life in Israeli society too: it shapes the educational system, our workforce opportunities, while fostering racism, violence and ethnic, national and gender-based discrimination.</em></p>
<p><em>We refuse to aid the military system in promoting and perpetuating male dominance. In our opinion, the army encourages a violent and militaristic masculine ideal whereby ‘might is right’. This ideal is detrimental to everyone, especially those who do not fit it. Furthermore, we oppose the oppressive, discriminatory, and heavily gendered power structures within the army itself.</em></p>
<p><em>We refuse to forsake our principles as a condition to being accepted in our society. We have thought about our refusal deeply and we stand by our decisions.</em></p>
<p><em>We appeal to our peers, to those currently serving in the army and/or reserve duty, and to the Israeli public at large, to reconsider their stance on the occupation, the army, and the role of the military in civil society. We believe in the power and ability of civilians to change reality for the better by creating a more fair and just society. Our refusal expresses this belief.</em></p>
</blockquote>
<p>Only a few of the 150 or so resisters are in prison. Danielle says that going to prison helps to make a statement. In fact, <a href="http://edition.cnn.com/2014/08/18/world/meast/israel-refusers/">here’s</a> one of her fellow refuseniks on CNN because he went to prison. But going to prison is essentially optional, Danielle says, because the military (IDF) has to pay 250 Shekels a day ($66, cheap by U.S. standards) to keep someone in prison and has little interest in doing so. Instead, many claim mental illness, says Yaor, with the military well-aware that what they’re really claiming is an unwillingness to be part of the military. The IDF gives men more trouble than women, she says, and mostly uses men in the occupation of Gaza. To go to prison, you need a supportive family, and Danielle says her own family does not support her decision to refuse.</p>
<p>Why refuse something your family and society expect of you? Danielle Yaor says that most Israelis do not know about the suffering of Palestinians. She knows and chooses not to be a part of it. “I have to refuse to take part in the war crimes that my country does,” she says. “Israel has become a very fascist country that doesn’t accept others. Since I was young we’ve been trained to be these masculine soldiers who solve problems by violence. I want to use peace to make the world better.”</p>
<p>Yaor is <a href="http://www.tolef.org/">touring the United States</a>, speaking at events together with a Palestinian. She describes the events thus far as “amazing” and says that people “are very supportive.” Stopping the hatred and violence is “everyone’s responsibility,” she says — “all the people of the world.”</p>
<p>In November she’ll be back in Israel, speaking and demonstrating. With what goal?</p>
<p>One state, not two. “There’s not enough space anymore for two states. There can be one state of Israel-Palestine, based on peace and love and people living together.” How can we get there?</p>
<p>As people become aware of Palestinians’ suffering, says Danielle, they should support BDS (boycotts, divestments, and sanctions). The U.S. government should end its financial support for Israel and its occupation.</p>
<p>Since the latest attacks on Gaza, Israel has moved further to the right, she says, and it has become harder to “encourage youth not to be part of the brainwashing that is part of the education system.” The letter above was published “everywhere possible” and was the first many had ever heard that there was a choice available other than the military.</p>
<p>“We want the occupation to end,” says Danielle Yaor, “so that we can all live an honorable life in which all of our rights will be respected.”</p>
<p><a href="https://www.facebook.com/refusingIDF">Learn more</a>.</p>
<p></p><p><a href="http://warisacrime.org/content/israeli-chooses-honorable-life-over-joining-military" target="_blank">read more</a></p>http://warisacrime.org/content/israeli-chooses-honorable-life-over-joining-military#commentsIsraelNonviolent ResistanceMon, 27 Oct 2014 17:55:34 +0000davidswanson68844 at http://warisacrime.org